


what are these roots that clutch

by sub_textual



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chakra Sex?, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Mokuton Bondage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-15
Updated: 2015-09-15
Packaged: 2018-04-20 21:48:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4803425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sub_textual/pseuds/sub_textual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Madara once found something irrepressibly beautiful in those flaws which lay upon Hashirama like the grooves of old trees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what are these roots that clutch

**Author's Note:**

> _"What we call the beginning is often the end, and to make an end is to make a beginning. "_  
>  \-- T.S. Eliot

The end is where we start: in a land laid flat with battle and torn with war; a land without a people, but with people who called the land their own. A land with time, but no history, for history was written in blood, crumbled to dust on each new battlefield upon which children were born. And clans rose or fell back into the earth, each reaching for the sun to claim it as its own. Their arms crushed out the sky and made shadow out of light and dreams and hope, which grew wild and green like the reeds that swayed in a river cut in a nameless land, during the pause for breath between the beats of drums, when wood and fire met under a cloudless sky. Just after the flowers had taken bud, and before the crops were ripe.   
  
The end is where we start because the end is what Madara remembers, when he stands on the memory of a cliff that is not yet cut jagged; not yet scarred into the valley of the end of his life and the beginning of legend. Here, where statues will one day hold graven testament in stone, to the remembrance of things past, a warning for those who might oppose a lawless land that gave birth to rooted tyranny.   
  
He remembers the battle here scarred the earth, cut open until it bled. Remembers those roots, how deep they stabbed, and the tree that grew after, locked in flesh. No amount of fire could turn it to ash. He remembers even when he tries to stop, tries to close his eyes against visions of fire and water and wood and earth, and how the stars fell from the sky that night.  
  
This, the birth of history, but this history was not his own -- for history is never written by those who fall, but by those who rise.  
  
The air grows choked with soot and smoke. A dead air, in a dead land outside of time.   
  
The sunset horizons are filled with fire, the sky with dust.   
  
And Hashirama stands before him now, stands at the beginning of memory's end, at the start of the same battle they had been fighting their entire lives. The same battle that breaks the earth, setting the world aflame with power that rips apart the ground beneath their feet and carves deeper than a river bottom, reaching for the fire that scorches the belly of the world. Reaching for the fire inside the other.  
  
They would break the world as brutally as they break each other.   
  
Until even Susano'o falls to its knees, shattering around a battle-worn body that struggles to fight long past the limits of humanity, beyond the limits of the human condition itself.   
  
Until the red drains from Madara's eyes.   
  
Until they come to the bottom of another valley, hewn into the earth with their might.   
  
To the bottom of the earth that runs red with blood.   
  
To the bottom of roots wrapped around Madara's arms and legs.   
  
To the bottom of memory, where all things begin.   
  
To the beginning, when you both were still so young, when the meeting of fists reverberated with the sound of laughter. When the earth did not cry for you to stop. When you believed you could create a world where children did not spend their little lives running towards death. When hope was as wide as the river where you learned how to dream, a river that held your secrets as it held the rocks you skipped.   
  
But to make a beginning is to make an end.   
  
And in the end, you stood alone, with ash in your mouth and no brothers left, or any family to call your own, except for a clan that both needed and abjured you who loved them more than anything in the world. For they were flesh of your flesh and blood of your blood and you would give them the heavens, raise them to the stars, and fulfill the promise you once swore to your younger brother. But look. Look at what they have become. Look at what this man and his kin did to your own.   
  
_Look._  
  
Madara rages against the wood that would bind him, screams in the darkness that rises up around him as Hashirama raises a great tree from the ground, sealing him within its hollow heart until even the stars and the moon have been stolen from his sight. This is the most terrible of fates, to be sealed like this, to be held in this way by unyielding wood with not enough chakra left to burn it to the ground.  
  
With not enough chakra to fight Hashirama, who stands silent and steady and still.   
  
For a long moment, there is only the breath that hangs between them and the beats of their hearts.   
  
Until, finally, Madara speaks.   
  
_"Do it."_  
  
Finish what you started.  
  
Make a final ending. 

To be stabbed in the front and die on a battlefield.   
  
To be given a warrior's death.   
  
Surely, this is what a man like Uchiha Madara deserved.   
  
But instead, he died deep within the earth eighty years after his great fall, under the shadow of a thousand effigies to a god he could not resurrect. To a god who stood before him once more in this final of resting places. And as Hashirama's steps grew nearer once more, he had wondered if upon this final battlefield, he would truly fall.   
  
And perhaps, what had come instead was far worse.  
  
For it was not with a blade, but a kiss that would deliver him death.   
  
A kiss, that has Madara gasping into Hashirama's mouth, which tastes like blood and sweat and the sweet plum wine they raised to the moon a hundred times, and hot summer nights when they made love under a sky which bore witness and spoke no secrets. Hashirama's mouth, which was as sweet and as hot as the brush of his hands and the solid weight of his body that pressed Madara to the inviolable earth; his mouth and the memory of being split apart by the very root of a god that reached through his body and found fertile soil in a fiery heart.   
  
His mouth, which was filled with words of love and dreams and promises he could never hope to keep. For he was not truly a god, but just a man, as flawed and as foolish as any other.   
  
Madara once found something irrepressibly beautiful in those flaws which lay upon Hashirama like the grooves of old trees. They held the promise of a future, the promise of dreams, the promise of an eternity of fire and earth and water which would not know the meaning of the burning horizon at dawn, or the weight of loss that carved into one's body the way it carved into the spaces laughter once filled. The promise of brotherhood, of family, of love. Promises that could only ever reside in the dreams of boys who were not yet men.   
  
But they were spoken with the mouth that kisses him now, and perhaps Madara only ever believed them at all because he could not forget how it felt when that mouth was pressed against his own even when he tried to stop. Even when he desperately wanted to turn memory to ash.   
  
_(No amount of fire could burn out the roots planted so deep inside.)_  
  
Like he tries now, with a sound of objection at the back of his throat, turning away from Hashirama's mouth, pulling away from the kiss that sends a violent stab straight through his heart.   
  
Because this cannot happen again. This  _should_  not happen again. Hashirama should be killing him instead, should be putting stop to this travesty of a life that cannot be called life at all.  
  
Yet, the wood has him trapped in such a way that he can barely even turn his head, and Hashirama's mouth is on his again, so insistent and warm. And his  _tongue_  is brushing across the seam of Madara's mouth and Madara can feel the smooth calluses on Hashirama's fingers, which cradle his face and brush across his cheek with such tenderness that it drives him  _mad_. Against his will, a hot shudder travels through his body, which betrays him as it always does whenever Hashirama touches him like this-- and suddenly, there is too much fire in his chest, and an  _ache_  so deep inside his body it nearly breaks him in half.   
  
He opens his mouth to say no, no this cannot happen again, this should not happen at all, because you would rather kill that which you claimed to love most for a system that was as broken as the world into which we were born, for a dream that would only ever remain a dream for as long as children go running to war, for a promise you could not keep because you are just a man as flawed as any other, a man who belongs to his village and his clan. But there was a time when you belonged to me, too. And no matter how hard I try to kill that thing inside me that is you, I cannot burn it out, cannot forget the way you said my name.   
  
Like it belonged to you.   
  
My name, and my power, and my heart. My body, my spirit, and my faith. It belonged to you as you belonged to me, and I cannot forget, even when I tell memory to stop, because it is a vindictive, spiteful thing that would sooner have me die than forget how deeply we once loved.   
  
So this must not happen, he tries to say, but the words don't come out, because Hashirama's tongue is in his mouth and Madara can't fight the quiet moan that chokes his throat, or the emotion that gathers itself up inside his body, a feeling so large it burns in his eyes and roars in his ears.   
  
And he  _hates_  it, the way he hates Hashirama.   
  
The way he hates himself.   
  
Because this, this has always been the end of him.  
  
_And what he's always wanted._  

This is all wrong.  
  
This is not the way this should have gone.   
  
They should stop. They should not be doing this. Madara should end this immediately and bite off Hashirama's tongue and hope that he'll choke on his own blood. Or perhaps he could gather the last of his chakra to breathe fire down Hashirama's throat. And what a horribly splendid way to die indeed, with a mouth full of fire and lungs filled with smoke. Perhaps then, Hashirama will understand what it is like to burn from the inside out, to know the feeling of a betrayal beyond words and fists and battles that split open the earth.   
  
Perhaps, when he is breathing down the last of Madara's life, he'll finally know.  
  
Perhaps in the end, love was Madara's undoing.   
  
Because it had always been for love that Madara acted. Love for his brother, love for his clan. Love for a people who did not love him in return, but whom he would have died a thousand times to deliver salvation. And he believed if he met Hashirama enough times on the battlefield, that Hashirama would come to understand that love too, and know its depths. How deeply Madara loved his people, such that he would see with eyes not clouded by dreams that could never come to be for as long as men continued to live and breathe and wish death upon Madara's kin. Men like Tobirama, who did not truly believe in such things as dreams which never belonged to him, because they were as much Madara's as they were Hashirama's.   
  
Hashirama, who refused to open his eyes and see, despite all the love Madara tried to share with him.   
  
So Madara tried to pry those eyes open by force and take back his people.   
  
Yet, for all the battles they had waged, and all the blood that had been shed, for all the violent ways Madara attempted to make Hashirama see and reclaim all that he had lost, it was for love that he did it. For love, that he would bring the world to its knees.   
  
For love, and for a secret Madara never told: that he would have started a thousand battles and a thousand wars just to meet Hashirama and know the part of him that belonged only to Madara and no one else.  
  
_(Once upon a time, a long time ago, there were two boys who gave themselves to each other because it was all they had to give. And between the sound of the wind through the trees, and the resounding beat of the earth below their bodies, was a whisper that sounded like love.)_  
  
Even if it was only for a moment, a moment was all Madara needed.   
  
Or so he believed, a lifetime ago.   
  
But this moment they share now is a moment that should have not occurred, and Madara cannot even fathom  _how_  this is happening now, when Hashirama so clearly demonstrated how much love he had left for Madara with a sword through the back. And all he can feel is the heat inside his body and a  _need_  that fills him up with such violence, it's agonizing to fight it when Hashirama's tongue is in his mouth and the solid strength of his body is pressed against Madara's own in such a way that Madara can  _feel_  him,  _all_  of him, from his shoulders to the strong plane of his chest, to the ripple of muscle below, and the hard heat of his--   
  
_("Madara--")_    
  
Madara lets out a broken breath, body shuddering as his fingers tighten into fists, hips jerking against Hashirama's even as he tells himself he is going to end it, he is going to break through this, he is going to breathe fire into Hashirama's lungs and they can both burn up together and die like they were always meant to.   
  
He is going to do it. He is going to. He is--   
  
_("--I love you.")_    
  
\-- kissing Hashirama back, desperately, hungrily, teeth nipping at Hashirama's lower lip hard enough to draw blood. He hopes it hurts, this kiss, the way it bruises both their mouths. He wants it to hurt Hashirama as much it hurts him, the way it stokes the fire inside him to roaring until he can't control himself anymore, until all he can  _feel_  is the fire, the burn. The way it eats up every part of him until all that is left is Hashirama, whose body he strains to meet with his own, rutting against him,  _starved_  for contact.   
  
He hates that he can't fight it.   
  
That he needs this.   
  
That he needs  _him_.  
  
Even when he tells himself he doesn't.   
  
_("...don't say such embarrassing things, Hashirama.")_

There are no words for this, this dangerous and violent thing that they call love. Because it is more than love, more than just an emotion or great romance, or a tale you tell around the campfire at night. This thing they have between them that shakes even the world itself and breaks apart the sky is greater than love, greater than anything humanity can define. It cannot be named, refuses definition. For it is not meant to be understood, this love that is as much a war as it is a blessing, as much heartbreak as it is happiness, as glorious and as terrible as the boundary between life and death itself upon which they so often walk and wage battle.   
  
And Madara had believed they could go on waging their love war for as long as the stars lit the sky.

For even this could transcend death, could last an eternity in a dream beyond a dream.

A world beyond a world.

But he had not expected or known that Hashirama would have been taken from the earth far before his time, fallen on a battlefield to an enemy who did not deserve his death. But even with Hashirama gone, the world did not end. And it was not until Madara dug him up and brought him back, watched his face in death, touched his cold skin with bare hands and lips that would never kiss again that he knew what he had to do, for this could not be the end. There was no ending for the two of them, and if Hashirama could not continue to remain alive in this world, then Madara would find a way to make him live once more. Madara would put Hashirama into himself, would carry him in his heart, give him life, or at least a part of him. He would find a way to resurrect Hashirama from beyond the grave and return him to the glory he once knew. And even if it were to take a lifetime of loneliness and struggle, of careful planning and biding his time, Madara would find a way to make his dream come alive.   
  
If not in this lifetime, then in the next.   
  
And with Hashirama in his heart, embedded forever in his body, Madara knew he could.   
  
But this is far beyond anything Madara had ever imagined, far more powerful, more overwhelming than anything he'd ever known. Hashirama's chakra, which had been a constant thrum in his body for all the years he lived with Hashirama inside of him, all those years he lived for them both, does not so much enter him as it inundates, an inexorable tidal wave that crashes down inside him and  _floods_  his senses. This, this is Hashirama, this is all of him, sudden and intense and so destructive it breaks down the last control Madara thought he had and makes his body  _shake_  under its might, makes him keen and moan as pure  _sensation_ , pure  _pleasure_  whirls through him, from his fingertips all the way down to his toes. It's an immense  _energy_ , a pure force that whirls chaotic inside his body, tightening around his very core and reaching its fingers out to touch him on the inside.   
  
And he goes  _wild_  with it, gasping out Hashirama's name as the pinwheels turn once more in his eyes, a flash of red for only a moment before Madara squeezes his eyes shut and his mouth opens and out comes out a cry as his body is wracked with pleasure, with  _need_ , and he thinks this might just be it, thinks he can't last under this, arousal threatening to overflow and  _burst_ , gossamer strands dripping from the tip as his body jerks in its restraints.   
  
_"Hashiramaaa...."_

It never should have been this way.  
  
They were never meant to be parted like the moon and the sun, to be fated to an eternity of separation, sharing nothing but the same wide sky they once swore to claim for themselves. It was never meant to end, this love that goes beyond any language the human vocabulary has to understand. And if Madara could close his eyes and pretend it never did, pretend that he could undo the lifetime of loss, of regret, of living with all the echoes of Hashirama around him and inside him, of living for them both because Hashirama was no longer alive to live for himself, maybe this would not hurt the way it still does. Even with Hashirama touching him like this, with their very souls entwined in such a way that Madara is not sure where he ends and where Hashirama begins, there is an ache that goes beyond what lips or fingers or tangled chakra can heal.   
  
A wound that just will  _not_  heal.  
  
Maybe it was never meant to.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This was cribbed together from an old roleplay thread I did with a friend! I mostly managed to stitch together all the Madara parts into some sort of fic. Hopefully you guys like it. ^^


End file.
